D ee, when she suddenly showed up a few days later (or so Hope guessed), looked absolutely murderous! The very essence of what made her 'death' seeped into the spacious bedroom. Again Hope was confronted with the sobering fact that the being she'd considered her best friend for so long, was anything but human.

The colours in the room seemed darker and there were shadows in places where no shadows had been just a moment before. The sheers hung limp, lifeless. An unnatural stillness crept into the room and even the flowers next to her bed seemed to lose their vibrancy.

"Do you have any idea what that was like for me? To see you on that floor, bleeding to death? To see what that, that monster did to you?" Dee seethed at her.

Hope flinched at the black, scathing glare she intercepted when she briefly dared to look up. Dee loved all mortals, even the bad ones. Claimed that the bad ones were simply hurting inside. She'd never heard her refer to another person as a monster. It was a testament then of her blistering fury that seemed to waft around her as a separate entity. And it made her feel very tiny and small.

"Did it occur to you, for even one moment, that I would be the one who'd have to see you off and set you on your path to the Sunless Lands?"

Hope did something she'd never had to do before, not in front of Dee. She lifted her chin, in an attempt to look stronger than she was. Even though her chin trembled a little, Hope kept it lifted, and tears burned in her eyes because the one person she'd never had to hide her weakness from, had been Dee.

"Yes," she said on a rush of breath. "And that's exactly why I could do it. Knowing that, if it really came down to that, you would be there for me."

The darkness and the shadows retreated when Dee flopped down unto the bed. Sensing that her friend was back, Hope lowered the defiant angle of her chin and something buried deep inside of her unfurled and heaved an enormous sigh of relief.

Dee gave her a serious look. "Do you realise you nearly robbed me of my best friend? Your mortal life span is,"–Dee breathed out as though she blew out a candle–"gone like that. Even if you were to reach the age of ninety years, it's but a drop of water in an ocean for me. Poof, gone! The time I get to spend with you is already so fleeting, and you would have cut that short… for what?"

At the moment, Hope didn't really understand herself. She'd certainly not expected Dee to react like this. In fact, when Dee first mentioned her captured brother, Hope had taken it as a silent plea for help. But, back then she'd been too young to really understand, let alone do something about it. And each and every time Dee confided in her, telling her about her worry for her brother...

"You were so worried about him," Hope said. "You started talking about him when I was, what, fifteen? For five subsequent visits after that, you brought it up. And then for years, nothing. Until…"

"Until last year when I had to take Paul Matthews. Damn it, Hope, is that what triggered all this? I have a moment of weakness and you decide it's up to you to bust out my idiot brother?"

And suddenly her own fury broke through. "I thought you wanted me to help you, okay!"

Dee's head snapped up at her. "You what?" she said, her voice low, and boom the shadows and the atmosphere of death was back.

It was a good thing she was angry herself now, or she would have made a spectacle of herself by cowering under the sheets. Which was still a very valid option in the near future, considering the dreadful look directed at her.

"You thought I was asking my very young, very mortal friend," Dee spoke very slowly and very precisely, "to risk her short human life to help out my very immortal brother? He would have found a way out on his own, eventually!" Dee's bitterness was knife-edged, but so was her own.

"At what cost, Dee? You told me yourself that you were worried about him and that you didn't know what it would do to him. I might not know him personally, but I know him through you . He used to be kinder, you said. Well, from what I could see, that kindness was almost gone!" She took a steadying breath and she quieted her voice. "In the grand scheme of things, my life isn't all that important. Having a ruler of dreams who cares, however, is."

"How can you say such a thing? Your life is important to me!" Dee's voice now sounded scraped raw.

Hope found she could scarcely say the words she wanted to say, because even thinking them sounded so bleak and depressing, yet they were also true. "And that," she said, voice now quivering, "is pretty much the only thing that gives it significance. Like you said, my life is fleeting. Ninety years, thirty years, the difference isn't all that much, not for you."

"You really think your life has no other significance? No other value?"

Dee didn't want to see it, she had a stubborn streak as well and Hope chuckled through her tears. She leaned forward, wincing a little at the burning sting in her back, but she took Dee's hands in hers.
"I'm not saying my life has no value, just that my life isn't very significant. I'm no world-changer. I live my life as best as I can but it will never have a great impact on world history. A thousand years from now, no one will even remember me. Except for you."

It looked as if Dee was going to counter with more arguments and Hope laughed softly, patting her hand. "I'm sorry I upset you, but can you please stop being angry now? I live, your brother is free… we should celebrate, not argue."

Dee suddenly moved in for a careful hug. "Can you at least promise me you will never, ever, do something so reckless and foolish again?"

"That I can do," Hope said with a smile. "Until one of your other siblings gets themselves into a mess and needs my specific help to save their arses."

With a little yelp she toppled back into the fluffy cushions when Dee pushed her back, albeit gently.

"No?" she asked, seeing her friend's dark glare.

Dee merely shook her head. "And for future reference, if and when I share my concerns with you, it's because that's what friends do. You taught me that. If I have to worry you're going to do something very stupid each time I share something with you…"

The threat, or rather warning, was clear. Something Dee couldn't bring herself to say and something Hope really didn't want to think about. Nothing would ever be worth risking their friendship for.

She gave a quick nod. "Understood."

Someone behind them cleared their throat and when Hope looked over towards the entrance of the bedroom, she noticed Lucienne standing there, as always wearing her formal attire: a crisp white shirt, black dress pants and vest and her long deep purple coat, and carrying a stack of books.

"It's my new friend!" Hope motioned for Lucienne to come closer. Dee shifted on the bed so she could look at the librarian. "Hello Lucienne, it's always a pleasure to see you. How's the library?"

Lucienne ducked her head a little. To hide that errant little smile perhaps? When she looked up again, she was every bit the Head Librarian of the Dreaming, though the smile still lingered. "It's a work in progress, my Lady and I thank you for asking. With Lord Morpheus' return, the library at least reappeared again, but a lot of the books only have blank pages or are still missing large sections." Lucienne spoke in such a sedated tone that Hope stifled a smile, and Dee nudged her in silent communication to behave.

"We're also still rounding up stray stories that vanished over the, eh, unfortunate period of time Lord Morpheus was, well… unavailable."

"That's a very polite way of saying he was trapped in a glass fishbowl for over a century. Completely starkers. In the nip. In the altogether. Buck–"

"We get it, Hope," Dee interrupted her and pointedly directed her gaze at the librarian. "Please do let me know when I can borrow a few books again, Lucienne, I don't have anything to read and–"

"No, I don't think you do get it, Dee. I have been traumatised for life!"

Silence plunked between them like an anvil had just dropped from the sky and both Dee and Lucienne sported mildly horrified looks. Right…

"I mean, you were always talking about your little brother, so I was expecting a little boy. Five years, ten years old tops. Imagine my surprise when I had my first glance at him and, eh…"

"He turned out to be a little bit older?" Dee supplied helpfully.

"Just a bit, yes."

Lucienne gave a suspicious cough behind her hand, and kept it there.

"Sent me straight back into my Hades slash Persephone obsession. I had poor Lucienne scouring the library for anything good in that department."

"And apparently that does not involve anything even remotely like the Homeric Hymn or works by Ovid," Lucienne added dryly, "even though they are amongst the first works that can actually be read again."

At that, Dee threw back her head and she howled with laughter, though Hope couldn't tell whether it was because of her admitted rekindled fascination for Hades and Persephone, or the dry tone that Lucienne had just applied.

"I thought we were done with that awkward phase!" Dee managed with a wheezy little laugh.

"Apparently not," Lucienne said with a smile and she held up her small stack of books, "I had to resort to some of the more recent, sordid unpublished works from the minds of young adolescent–"

"TMI, Lucienne!" Hope cried out as she flung the counterpane over her head to hide her flaming cheeks. "TMI!"

"Aw, do you want me to ask my little brother to send you a few lovely dreams detailing the steamy adventures of Hades wooing Persephone?" Dee's voice sounded a bit muffled, but unfortunately Hope could still hear her clearly through the fabrics of the linen and the counterpane."

She'd not expected Dee and Lucienne to gang up on her so swiftly, and… in tune!

"Oh God!" she groaned, "Please kill me dead, now! A thunderbolt would be nice, or something else with smiting power."

"A request I sincerely hope will go unanswered," a familiar smooth voice suddenly said. "It would render my efforts to keep you alive futile."

If silence earlier fell like an anvil, it now seemed to implode in on itself, sucking all sound from the room, if not the entire realm.

"Did someone ever mention you have terrible timing?" Hope said, her breath wafting off the fabric and hitting her straight back in the face. Which did nothing for her still red-hot flaming cheeks.

"I merely wished to inform my head librarian of my imminent departure. I did not find her in the library. Lucienne?" Morpheus said, completely ignoring her remark.

Her librarian friend delicately cleared her throat. "I stopped by to hand off a few books that Hope requested, sir. And to see if there was anything else she needed."

It wasn't exactly as if silence dropped like a hammer again, she could hear some shuffling and rustling, but no one said a word, Hope had no idea what was going on and she was nearly tempted to come back out of hiding. It was getting a bit hot under the bedding after all.

But then. "Fifty Shades of Hades? Tartarus Sutra? The Courting of Persephone?"

A long, very awkward pause ensued.

There was a repressed muffled, strangled kind of sound and Hope suspected either Dee or Lucienne was trying very hard not to submit to hysterical laughter.

"Deeper, Deeper into my Cave?"

Hope wished she had control in the Dreaming, like Morpheus. Perhaps then she could have summoned a pistol because she felt a sudden need to kill herself.

Then inspiration struck.

"Lucienne, what were you thinking?" she squeaked, trying to add a believable amount of mortification and indignation. "I specifically asked for the Homeric Hymn or anything by Ovid, or… eh, the Odyssey!"

Apparently, she was the kind of person who had no qualms at all throwing her friends under the bus, so to speak.

"Of course," Lucienne replied dryly. "What was I thinking?"

Hope knew she had some smoothing of ruffled feathers to do.